Get rid of the boxes, they're boxing you in

We recently submitted an application for an awards program sponsored by one of our industry’s major publications. The program seeks out the most innovative solutions in business intelligence, and groups the categories into areas such as data management, analytics, business process management and more.

Then, there’s the category called, “Other Innovative Solutions.” Which is where our client we submitted for the award falls; it’s a company that takes multiple mailing lists and uses analytics to clean the list in a mere fraction of the time that it’s taken in the past. Marketing folk will tell you that a clean mailing list is vital to their ability to do their jobs effectively. The data analysts who manually cleaned these lists in the past will tell you they’d rather suffer through root canal surgery. Our client’s solution, built on our WX2 database, saves companies untold amounts of time and money, and allows marketers to get their targeted messages into the marketplace more quickly, which means they can begin seeing the results faster as well.

Now, we hope we win the award, but that’s not the point. Rather, it’s that the most innovative solutions frequently come from those who aren’t willing to allow themselves to be categorized. Our client heard the frustration of its clients, and developed a solution that does not fit neatly into any pre-configured box. Hence, the “Other Innovative Solutions” category. Last we heard, they’re doing gangbusters business.

So, here’s your challenge: what have you done recently that doesn’t think “in” or “outside” of the box, but assumes there is no box? What have you done that will set you apart from everyone else, and leaves them trying to catch up with your thinking?

This isn’t a mindless exercise, of course: Kognitio has pioneered numerous initiatives in the BI/DW space, such as the development of an in-memory database, or the use of multiple parallel processing for data analytics. More recently, of course, we introduced the industry’s first BI SaaS offering, Data Warehousing as a Service (DaaS). Others, of course, have followed our lead, and that’s a good thing…because it validates our approach to the market.

Others will undoubtedly copy what our client is doing as well, and implement analytical technology to scrub mailing lists more quickly. But for now, they have a clear advantage in the marketplace, as do their clients. And they did it without relying on “box thinking.”

Get rid of the boxes. They’re boxing you in.